17 Kasım 2016 Perşembe

It has been more than two years since your departure, and I
am no closer to reconciliation. This is not so much because you left us at the
ripe old age of 94- one could not fairly ask for more, though a son is certain
to miss his father- especially such an honourable and kind hearted one. I am
still overcome by how much disappointment you suffered in the last years of
your life, how so much of what you believed in and loved either disintegrated
or came crashing down around you. And I was unable to provide adequate
consolation.

You believed in your country, the Republic, and Ataturk,
the man who founded it. As an officer, you had been trained to defend it, and you
did it wholeheartedly. You believed the nation was united in the same spirit,
patriotic and forward-looking. You believed in the NATO alliance, that the
United States was a good and trustworthy ally, and that Americans were friends who
accepted us as their equals. You believed they were fair.

With fellow NATO officers in Brooklyn Army Terminal, April 20th 1961. There you are with the shades. False friends?

Your daughter married an American and settled in the US.
Though reluctant about her marriage, you were kind and hospitable towards her
husband, as indeed you were to all men. Then they stopped visiting. For years
you longed to see your daughter again. Each time you wrote, each time she
phoned, you asked when she would be coming, and got nothing but evasive
answers. This went on for nearly twenty years. It must have been very hard to
realize that you would never see your daughter, your “Rose” again.

The United States, our NATO ally of the Cold War years, must
never have seen us as their equals; it was evidently an alliance of necessity
with the aim of covering the southwest flank of the Soviets and blocking their
acces to the Middle East and the Mediterranean. With the end of the Cold War,
our Yankee friends had a new agenda: to use their unchallenged and
unchallengeable might as the sole superpower to reorganize the World according
to their own vision, rearranging borders as they saw fit. Including ours.

To this end they hosted, and are hosting, the renegade
cleric Fethullah Gülen whose aim it is to transform the secular Turkish
Republic into a theocratic one on the archaic Ottoman model. And they euphemistically
called this “moderate Islam”!

To this end they supported Tayyip Erdoğan and his AKP and
orchestrated the party’s incredible election victory in 2002,

within a year of
being founded- an unheard-of success in a political milieu infested with parties and endless coalitions!

Erdoğan visiting George Bush in 2002,

before actually becoming Prime Minister.

Legions of journalists were purchased to build the public
opinion for the transformation. Still, there was resistance. And when the
heavy hand of the “moderate Islamic” government came down on the resistance,
the West continued to hail Erdoğan as the reformist bringing democracy to the
erstwhile "undemocratic" Kemalist state.

Gülen’s infiltration of the police, the judiciary, the
press, and even the armed forces was a slow, patient operation. Using a deft
mixture of religion and blackmail, the cult extended its tentacles to key
points in the administration and the state. Gülen's US hosts cannot have been unaware
of it. CIA operative Graham Fuller, who reportedly filled out Gülen’s Green
Card application personally, cannot have done it out of intimate friendship. (The concept
of “Moderate Islam” came out of the RAND Corporation study in which Fuller was
directly involved!) The AKP did its part by facilitating Gülen’s infiltration,
blocking attempts to sift them out.

Some people in a position to know attempted to pursue the
matter, expose the movement and expel its members from state institutons, but
they invariably found themselves added to the Ergenekon grab bag, arrested and in prison. The most telling case was that of the unpublished book "The Imam’s Army” (İmamın Ordusu), by Ahmet Şık. When all-powerful state prosecutor
Zekeriya Öz got wind of its existence, he launched a raid on the publishing
house (İthaki), seized manuscripts, erased files from the computers’ hard disks March 23rd, 2011), and had
Şık arrested and imprisoned (March 6th, 2011) as a member of the Ergenekon “terrorist organization”. The text
made an appearance on a foreign internet site. The
hasty effort to bury it tends to affirm its contents.

It was published later as Ooo Kitap (“Thaaat Book”), subtitled Dokunan yanar ("If you youch, you burn").

In retrospect, one begins to see how the collapse and
disintegration of the Soviet Union must have been a US operation; how an entire
country could be made to change its regime and give up huge chunks of its
territory through apparently legal steps; how a counterrevolution attempting to
halt the collapse could be stopped through US pressure, if not direct
interference. At the time we were on the other side of the fence, so we did not
give it much thought!

Now it was Turkey, father, your country, the NATO ally, that was targeted, to be transformed, its
borders changed. In line with “The Greater Middle East Project” large chunks of
land were to be carved out of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey to create a new
political entity called Kurdistan. Iran, Iraq and Syria could be overrun
militarily in one way or other, either through a “coalition” to oust a dictator
as in Iraq, or allowing and even nurturing an unimaginably violent terrorist
group like DAESH (a.k.a. ISIS or ISIL) that would just have to be put down by
international intervention. So long as the existing internationally recognized Syrian government, the real target, isn’t allowed to do it by its own means.

Middle East "Utopia" according to the Greater Middle East Project..

Turkey, a NATO ally, had to be brought around differently,
with all the trappings and appearance of peaceful change through democratic
means. All defenders of national interest needed to be neutralized through
defamation, blackmail, arrests and (as many shadowy deaths lead to suspect)
murder. Ataturk's secular Republic had to be discredited and transformed. National identity would have to be eliminated, to be replaced by religious
community spirit. A leader of the faith, a single holy man whose word is law could then guide the
masses while in turn being guided by US/globalist interests- a spiritual shepherd whose
influence might reach beyond the borders of the new “moderate Islam” Turkey to
include the Middle East, a new Caliph reviving the Ottoman one abolished by
Ataturk- a Muslim Pope- or America’s own Ayatoullah. Gülen seems to be the US choice
for the job, though Erdoğan seems to consider himself better suited. Both men
are venerated as prophets, even God, by their respective adherents.

Americans used to call such underhanded methods "un-American"!

When Erdoğan launched his “peace process” with
representatives of the Kurdish seperatist movement- including militants on the
ground as well as imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, he and the AKP
presented the movement not as abandoning
territory, but expanding to reclaim
areas that once belonged to the Ottoman Empire. According to this vision, the
new reunited Kurdistan would somehow be integrated into Turkey’s borders in a
kind of federal arrangement. To allow the “peace process” to move smoothly, the
Armed Forces were placed under tighter government control, making all military
operations subject to the approval of AKP appointed governors. The PKK could
strike with the knowledge that the local garrison would not be allowed to
pursue. Throughout the peace process the PKK rearmed, stockpiled arms and
ammunition, and conducted assassinations of revenge.

(Images from the media.)

(And daddy, your CHP clung to the “peace process” even after
the AKP itself broke them off!)

The real nightmare started for us with the news items about
an alleged “conspiracy” called Ergenekon,
provocatively named after a national Turkish legend- a perfect choice for an
Islamist regime, albeit “moderate”, to discredit national sentiments. A slew of
related “conspiracy” allegations followed, like the “Sledgehammer” (Balyoz) that primarily targeted the
Navy (See: "Balyoz-The Sledgehammer", 6 Eylül-September 2012, "Sledgehammer Verdicts", 22 Eylül-September 2012).

Waves of arrests followed. Slips of paper were “found” by
the (Gülenist) police, which led to cachés of buried arms- placed there by the
(Gülenist) police. The (Gülenist) prosecutors charged the suspects, and
delivered them to (Gülenist) judges. The pro-government and pro Gülen press
molded the public opinion.

Intellectuals, academicians, non-conforming journalists were
targeted- but the main target was the Armed Forces, your armed forces father. You were long retired, but you suffered
to see your colleagues, many of whom you personally knew, hauled off to prison, with a disturbingly large portion of the press and media cheering!

And the
West continued to laud the “democratic” Erdoğan for “reigning in the military”.

You suffered, dad, as you heard Erdoğan and his AKP cronies
insult the Republic and its founders, belittle its achievements, and vocally
yearn for an allegedly glorious past- an Empire known in its waning years as
“The Sick Man of Europe”.

I remember you saying it offended you not to have been
arrested along with your friends. Probably because they knew that, at your age,
you wouldn’t survive the prison conditions, as some indeed didn’t. One of your
colleagues collapsed in prison and died the very day you left us (Ret. Naval Capt. Murat
Özenalp, May 1st 2014; see "Old Soldiers Never Die", 13 Mayıs-May 2014). But they did tap your
phone, as a letter from the State Prosecutor’s Office confirmed, so they had
their eyes on you, don’t worry. (The prosecutor who signed that letter, Muammer Akkaş, was later himself prosecuted as a Gülen collaborator.)

All the while, you had faith in the CHP, the major
opposition party, because “it’s the party founded by Ataturk himself”. That,
and because the newspapers you read led you to believe it.

The sad reality is that the CHP, and the second opposition
party, the MHP, have long been transformed into “acceptable” alternatives to
the AKP, the leadership amenable to US plans. Their job is to hold and nullify
the opposition votes, and keep them from drifting to parties that can seriously
challenge the administration. The %10 threshold spooks voters from voting for any
party other than the surefire ones, and widespread cheating takes care of the
rest. (All of this makes the newborn AKP’s 2002 election victory even more incredible!)
You never stopped believing in CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, and I never
stopped trying to get you to see through him- which dragged us into some of our
most disagreeable arguments, all of which I bitterly regret now. Our last years
were overcast with an atmosphere of doom; the least we could have done would have
been to steer away from politics and get along better. But your country was
always on your mind and you just couldn’t keep yourself from talking about it.

Which bothered you more daddy? The stab in the back of our
onetime allies, or the widespread treason of your countrymen?

By 1997, you no longer had illusions about US policy and outlook.Videoclip

When my wife and I took to the streets in defense of the
Republic and your Armed Forces, you were the hero I looked up to and emulated,
the name I sought to live up to! We joined the Silent Scream demonstrations
almost every Saturday in defense of the officers imprisoned on false charges,
even when the government-endorsed press was raining abuse on them. (See "Vardiya Bizde-Now It's Our Shift", 6 Kasım-November 2012, "Hammering the Sledgehammer", 6 Şubat-February 2013, "Makes You Want to Scream", 12 Şubat -February 2013, "Devouring his Own Children", 19 Şubat-February 2013, "A Not-So-Silent Scream", 3 Ocak-January 2014.) We went to
the accursed Silivri prison to demonstrate for thevictims of the trumped charges. (See: "Silivri, 18-02-2013", 25 Şubat-February 2013, "To Silivri Again", 29 Mart-March 2013, "Provokation-Silivri, April 8th", 13 Nisan-April 2013) There, we went to the tent of the “Silivri Watch”
of the heroic Hıdır Hokka. That watch stayed there for years, from September 9th 2011 until the end of June 2014, by which time almost all of the framed and condemned suspects were released. The courts have since confirmed their
innocence, and the culpability of the Gülenist moles within the police and judiciary.
The western press hardly mentioned the standoffs before the prison (you can
read some of them in this blog), nor did they mention the tent of the “Silivri
Watch”- not even as an interesting news item. Mr. Hokka and the volunteers of the watch were out there before the prison compound miles from nowhere in the cold
and heat, day and night, for 1130 days! More embarrasingly, much of the Turkish press avoided
mentioning it as well, with vested interests elsewhere.

When the AKP government attempted to ban national holidays,
we went with the resisting crowds, to Ankara, to Taksim, to Ataturk’s Mausoleum
to show that we still believed in the Republic and would not give up honouring
it’s founder. In Ankara on Republic Day 2012 we had a close encounter with the
Grim Reaper himself dressed as riot police spewing gas on a crowd of men, women
and children where it was too crowded to move away. (See "What I saw on Republic Day", 1 Kasım-November 2012) That October 29th, 2012 might
well have become the dates engraved on our headstones.

And not being able to
breathe is a terrible thing.

Braving gas and water cannon to celebrate Republic Day,

Ulus Square, Ankara, October 29th 2012.

(Image from the media.)

Did our struggles make you proud? I hope they did!

Something happened on November 17th 2013- Gülen’s moles in
the police and judiciary launched an operation against the illegal dealings of
AKP bigwigs, reaching the family of Erdoğan himself. How did the close Gülen-AKP partnership sour so much?

Erdoğan had managed to
hold on to power after the serious challenge of the Gezi uprising in June, but his aggressive nature had clearly fanned
the unrest. (See: "Taksim Promenade Park", 31 Mart-March 2013, "Promenade Park Uprising, Continued" 6 Haziran-June 2013) The US had thus begun to see Erdoğan as a liability rather than an asset, so just months after his days as an honoured guest at the White
House (May 2013- in time to avoid the May 19th celebrations; see "Sailing to Samsun", 4 Ağustos-August 2013) he found himself out of favor. CHP chief Kılıçdaroğlu’s
trip to the US and tête-à-tête talks with US ambassador Ricciardone were clear
indications that he was jokeying to become his successor.

The Gülen cult had of
course long been aware of the underhanded dealings of their partners, the AKP clan, patiently
collecting incriminating material to be used if needed. And when they (or the
US) decided the time had come, they launched the operation, raiding homes of
family members and seizing untold amounts of hard cash.

Right: Posters demanding

that the AKP ministers exposedby the Gülenist prosecutors be broughtto justice.

(Image from my own camera.)

The CHP joined in the
outcry. Erdoğan, as skillful in agression as he is poor in diplomacy, struck back,
calling it a “coup attempt” (which it was, though this shouldn't exonerate the his party).

Erdoğan came down on Gülen’s moles in the police and
judiciary, first moving them about and later on arresting and charging them,
starting from the bottom and working upwards.
The Pro-Government press started to spew abuse on Gülen, which it had
hitherto venerated. The Gülenist press, until recently indistinguishable from
the Pro-Government one, started severe criticism of the Government. The CHP and
its press chose to ignore the part played by Gülenist police and prosecutors in
the Ergenekon, “Sledgehammer” and
related witchhunts, and started to sound like the Gülenist press.

You, dad,
were either unwilling, or just too tired, to take all of this in. You followed
the CHP line of reasoning and saw Erdoğan, personally, as the only evil.

My wife and I adopted the viewpoint of the Vatan Party (the
erstwhile Labor, or Workers’ Party): that both the Gülen cult

and Erdoğan's AKP are threats; they were so when working in close
cooperation, they continue to be so when at each others’ throats! This was not a black-and-white viewpoint,
and therefore difficult to digest for a public that likes clear alternatives.

When the partnership between Erdoğan's AKP and the Gülen cult collapsed, onlythe Vatan party group opposed both sides. Poster for the TGB's demonstration, December 21st 2013. (Image from my own camera.)

As Erdoğan got the upper hand and started sifting out the
powerful Gülen mole network in the police and judiciary, there was new hope for
the victims of the Ergenekon,
“Sledgehammer” and related witchunts, tried and convicted by Gülenist judges.
The Ergenekon verdicts had been passed out in August 5th 2013 at the courthouse
inside Silivri prison with extreme precautions to keep protesters from reaching
the compound. (See: "Ergenekon Trials and Tribulations", 30 Ağustos-August 2013.) This was only four months before the aforementioned November 17th raids by the
Gülenist prosecutors and police that led to the great split between the erstwhile
partners, Gülen and the AKP. After the split, March 2014 saw the first releases of the
witchhunt victims at Silivri,
including Vatan party chairman Doğu Perinçek and former chief-of-staff Ret.
Gen. İlker Başbuğ. Fortunately, dad, you did live to see this much, though not long enough to see
the release of the victims of the “Sledgehammer” and other hoaxes, nor their
formal acquittal. (See: "Melting the Mountain of Iron", 4 Kasım-November 2014.)

Neither did you see Erdoğan have himself elected
President (August 10th 2014).The oppositon parties, "secular" CHP

and "nationalist" MHP practically helped along by putting up
another “moderate Islam” candidate (Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu), alienating their own
electoral bases while failing to impress the rest. Either they were trying to appease the US, or helping Erdoğan
along.

Poster pointing out thatboth presidential candidates are the same.

The third candidate for the Turkish presidency was the
Kurdish-seperatist Selahattin Demirtaş, which would have been the irony of
ironies had it not been totally impossible. You couldn’t have stomached any
outcome, but would probably have grudgingly accepted the CHP’s candidate (I
couldn't, didn’t vote, nor did my wife.)

As Erdoğan drifted away from his erstwhile mentor, the US,
he seemed to move closer to the military. Earlier on, he had removed all
military presence from the Parliament and residences, preferring the police.
With his prosecution of the Gülenists in the police, he reinstated the military
to guard his massive new “Presidential Palace”, including the revived mounted guard, and adding 16 soldiers in historic costume in the process.

President Erdoğan exiting his spanking new Presidential Palace, past the military guard. To the right, soldiers dressed to represent the "16 Free Turkish States in History, represented by the stars of the Presidential Arms (insert).

(Image from the Media.)

On July 24th,2015, the Turkish Armed Forces commanded by
the new Chief of Staff Gen.Hulusi Akar launched the first of its operations
against the PKK both in the southwest and beyond the borders. Every operation
since has been named after a military man assassinated by the PKK. The date,
July 24th, is significant in itself: on that day in 1923 Turkey had signed the
Treaty of Lausanne with the victors of World War I. As you were fond of recounting to us over and over, those victors had
partitioned Turkey in 1920 with the humiliating Treaty of Sèvres, but the following years had seen the Turkish War of Independence, under the leadership of
Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk), and the Treaty of Lausanne had affirmed the new
borders. Launching the first operation on July 24th was therefore a symbolic reaffirmation
of the

treaty which the “Greater Middle East Project” had sought to undermine.

Soldiers evacuating citizens in devastated Sur district of Diyarbakır, Turkey.(Image from the media.)

The PKK was by now well entrenched and operations in the eastern
townships were hard and painful, but the public supported it and the Islamist
Erdoğan, apparently free of US pressure, added a nationalist allure to his hitherto religious aura- which
meant a surge in popularity. A state of cautious harmony began to develop in the upper echelons of the
state. The US was probably not happy that the long standing

Turkish soldier pursuing PKK affiliates in Syria.

operations to
transform Turkey had misfired. Moreover, the US was actively supporting PKK
affiliates PYD and YPG in Syria, and the new nationalist Erdoğan was not amenable to
that.

On July 15th 2016 the cautious harmony between Erdoğan and
the military was shattered. Tanks rolled out, fighter planes took to the skies.
It was something Erdoğan had long feared, had long prepared for, but came at a
most unlikely time. A detachment raided the state television channel (TRT) and forced
an attractive blonde commentator to read their statement. They had named their
operation “peace in the land” (Yurtta Barış, borrowed from Ataturk himself) which sounds like
an intention to halt operations against the PKK and recommence the “peace
process”- the wishes of the US.

Erdoğan appealed to the public through the socail media to
take to the streets and halt the coup- and hundreds heeded

the call. The
public reaction was not confused, but organized, which implies that the AKP had
long prepared contingency plands for just such an emergency.

Erdoğan's call for resistance. (Image from the media.)

Inside the Armed Forces, there was no unity. The coup had been
staged by renegade officers who had taken the chief of staff and the commanders
of the forces hostage. Chief of Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar endured a stranglehold but
refused to endorse the coup, and bore the scars to prove it. Turkish soldiers
fired on other Turkish soldiers in a civil war that was fought and decided within 24
hours. Jets from the base in Diyarbakır,
flew to Ankara to bomb our parliament- the Diyarbakır base where you once had
been commander, father, and where I had played as a child. Newspapers claim there are Americans stationed at
that base as today,and their İncirlik base in Adana is not too far away! Jets from Eskişehir bombed the airstrip at Mürtet (Akıncılar) outside Ankara to
keep rebel planes from taking off.

And, father, Turkish soldiers fired on their own citizens.
More than two hundred died that terrible night and the next day. You couldn’t
have endured the sight of Turkish helicopters raining bullets on their own
people; the knowledge that men wearing the same uniform could act in this way
would have killed you. None of the coups and military interventions in our
history has ever caused such bloodshed.

NCO Ömer Halisdemir was ordered by his commanding officer to intercept and shoot coup leader Gen. Semih Terzi. He carried out his orders, fully aware of the consequences; he was shot himself immediately afterwards.(Image from the media.)

That night was also a night of prayers from mosques,
calling on Allah’s intervention to crush the enemies of the sacrosanct Erdoğan.
Some presented it as a victory of democracy but for many it was the victory of
Islam.

The spooked government kept calling for contiued presence
of crowds on the streets. Whatever may be said of those crowds, whose
motivations may have ranged from bravery to fanaticism, it is clear that
Erdoğan would not shy from using the population as human shields.

(Images from the media.)

Immediately afterwards people with authoritative knowledge
on the matter, on the officers involved, concluded that the coup was launched
by the Gülen cult. New evidence coming out daily has confirmed this; the Vatan
party newspaper Aydınlık had
published an article about the need to sift out Gülenist elements from the
military just before the coup.

The AKP immediately capitalized on its victory, plastering
the country with posters about democracy and the rule of the people, going as far as to quote Ataturk, the party's nemesis, and even use his image.

Banner in Nazilli: "Sovereignity belongs unconditionally to the people". Erdoğan and Ataturk apparently reconciled at last- until Erdoğan reconsolidates his power! (Image from the media.)

There is a widescale purge of Gülen adherents underway right now-but mostly functionaries way down on the ladder and simpler people. There is a blatant reluctance to look within the ruling AKP itself; as one time partners, they should be prime suspects!

We all knew by now of Gülenist presence in the police and judiciary. We had heard about Gülen’s attempts to infiltrate the
military, but chosen to believe it was exaggerated. The

bloody night of July
17th was a rude awakening. In the wake of the coup, many books on the Gülen
movement were republished. I am reading a most bothersome one now, called Ağacın Kurdu (“The
Worm of the Tree”),
from 2015.

Ağacın Kurdu ("The Worm of the Tree") by Mustafa Önsel,ISBN:978-605-84360-8-4

Written by Col. Mustafa Önsel, himself an ex-"Sledgehammer" convict, it tells of the underhanded methods by which the
cult members enter the Forces as professionals, rise through the ranks by
clandestine mutual assistance, and eliminate whoever isn’t one of their own. Going as far
back as the early years of this century and growing in scope, it involves
leaking exam questions, changing answer sheets, issuing false health reports
and applying inhuman conditions in basic training to undesirables, even slander! (See: "Adultery and Espionage", 28 Nisan-April 2013.) And all because a
holy man in Pennsylvania said Allah desires it that way!

Oh father, how many of the young officers you met, trusted, and confided in
had already given their allegiance to Fethullah Gülen (and duly reported
everything you said?)

The victorious Erdoğan went on to punish the Armed Forces-
even though he and his party had been instrumental in the massive infiltration
of the Gülen cult in all strata of the state apparatus (To be fair, Erdoğan did offer an apology of sorts, saying they had been "fooled"!) Gone was the military guard from the Presidential Palace, the mounted ones and all. The military academies were transformed to quasi-civilian institutionswhile the military high
schools were closed down outright, even though the above mentioned book claims cadets coming
from these high schools had been the prime targets of the Gülenists entrenched in
the academies.

Demonstration to reopen the military high schools, led by the heroic Hıdır Hokka (speaking to microphone). He had earlier organized the "Silivri Watch".

The arm forces, still smarting from the loss of officers given up to the Ergenekon,
"Sledgehammer" and related hoaxes, are now further decimated by the
purge of Gülenists- and this at a time of conflict with the PKK within
as well as ISIS plusthe US-backed PYD and YPG in Syria. The GATA military hospitals
were made civilian and the one in
Istanbul renamed Abdul Hamid (known in the West as the “Red Sultan”) to
spite
the Armed Forces in particular and Kemalists in general. Mustafa Kemal
had
been attached to the military unit that deposed Abdul Hamid II in 1909, as had been my own grandfather, your father.

Left: An artist's impression of the deposition of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, April 27th, 1909.

Right: The Sultan avenged-the former military hospital GATA transformed into the civilian Sultan Abdülhamid Hospital after the failed coup.

That hospital had often treated you, and my mother, and
you had
great confidence in it. That’s where I took you when you took ill on that terrible night of April 11th 2014, that’s where
I saw you for the last time. For your sake I was willing to overlook its
shorcomings.

Until I read the book. In it, it is claimed that GATA too was
infiltrated by the Gülen cult, issuing unfavorable health reports to
non-Gülenist candidates and cadets to get rid of them. (Indeed, some have rejoined the Forces after the botched coup exposed the scam!) I was reminded of the
male GATA doctor who refused to check my wife because she was a woman- a very
strange occurence in the hospital of the secular Kemalist Turkish Armed Forces.

And I am forced to think- into whose hands did I deliver my
father? Signed away the paper giving the hospital all authority? You were old and
frail so I can’t say you would have lived much longer, but the last time I saw you your oxygen hose had been taken out and you were gasping for breath. The doctor said it was to encourage you
to breathe on your own. I told him you didn’t deserve this. Was this proper
procedure? Couldn’t they, shouldn’t
they have made it easier for you? By next morning you were gone!

Not being able to breathe is a terrible
thing.

I visited your grave again last summer- I do that once in a
while, does me good to sit and talk. But this time, I was taken aback. They had
planted a rose, and there was a yellow rosebud- like your “Rose”, the daughter
you yearned so long to see again, lured away and enfeebled, made powerless by a
culture that promised so much and then took everything. On your gravestone, as
on all the gravestones in the military cemetary, there is a Turkish flag waving
in the breeze, still there, in spite of all the falsehood, the treachery, the
poisoning of minds and souls, to console you, and me, that the country we
imagined still exists.

11 Ağustos 2016 Perşembe

Ret. Rear Admiral Türker Ertürk was commander of the
Military Academies when he resigned in protest over the harrassment of officers
during the Ergenekon, "Sledgehammer" hoaxes and related allegations that cleared
the Turkish Armed Forces of the best in the higher command and the finest in
the upcoming ranks. The prosecutors, judges as well as the police were infested
with Gülen’s moles at the time.

The July 15th coup attempt was reportedly spearheaded by
Gülen’s moles in the military, many of whom had been promoted to positions
cleared from officers forcibly discharged through the hoaxes whose eventual
aquittal did not mean a return to their former positions.

Admiral Ertürk has been tried for “insulting the President” (at a Silent Scream rally in Tekirdağ on May 13th 2014),
having called him a “dictator”. He was sentenced to 11 months, which was converted to a bulky fine. After July 15th President Erdoğan has withdrawn
all such charges as a gesture. I don’t know whether Admiral Ertürk benefited
from this, but he certainly has not become more subservient.

This is my translation of an article by Admiral Ertürk from
August 5th 2016.

Speaking on the GPS
program presented by Fareed Zakaria
on CNN International, Fethullah Gülen said
he had nothing to do with attempted coup, likening the incidents of July 15th
to a “Hollywood film”, calling it
all a scenario.

Gülen was right, the coup attempt was really a film. To put
it more correctly, it was a TV series, on air since hustle-bustle days of the
“Cold War”. It has been directed, scripted and released a by the guiding mind in
the country where Gülen has been residing fort he past 17 years.

WHAT WAS THE AIM OF THE COUP?

Gülen was
pretty much one of the oldest actors of this series! The government in power, erstwhile
comrade now accused by Gülen, has
been a role player since 2002. And this is still not the full lineup of
criminals! From politics to media, from business circles to the state
bureaucracy and the military many took part in this series scripted by the guiding mind, some unknowingly, some for economic gain or political ascension-
and they still do.

On the July 15th installment of this long running series
targeted the Republic of Turkey, its
founding ideology, and the Turkish Armed
Forces. It had been assessed that, whether successful or not, such a coup
would serve the interest of the mastermind, and the button was pushed by way of
manipulation of the Cemaat(Djemaat=“Commuity”, for Gülen Community). President Erdoğans possible
reactions after a failed coup attempt, how he would see this as an opportunity,
and how even this would serve the cause, had all been taken into account.

WHO WAS MOST RESPONSIBLE?

Turkey’s
interests and security demanded that the pro-Cemaat
substructure be flushed out of the state, most urgently the Turkish Armed Forces. But it wasn’t
done, wasn’t allowed to be done!

I look at television and the written press; with some small
exceptions, they are still maintaining a anti-national, unethical stance. They
are mostly interviewing people victimized by the Cemaat, telling us what a devil Gülen is, what a great struggle the ruling government is putting up
for democracy, and thereby misleading the public, hiding the greater picture,
and barring those capable of revealing it from the screens. In truth, the
greatest responsibility of the victimization of said victims rests on the
shoulders of the AKP government.
Once you fail to say as much, victim or not, you too become a tool of the
operation.

The greatest responsibility of the attempted coup of July
15th lies with the AKP government, having in time aided and abetted the Cemaat
in penetrating and organizing itself to an extent it could stage a coup, having
lent unconditional support to its illegal operations, (Admiral Ertürk here refers
to the Ergenekon , “Sledgehammer” and
related hoaxes that crippled the military).

WHO
WERE FOOLED AND MISLED?

Any declaration that avoids saying as much, avoids pointing
out that the guiding mind behind it all is the USA, avoids mentioning the New World Order and sub-projects like the
Greater Middle East Project
supporting it, is a declaration made in ignorance, falsehood, or with a secret
agenda.

Saying “we were
fooled and misled” does not acquit one from responsibility. Assuming it
does, what will happen if the coup plotters say in court “Fethullah Gülen fooled and misled us by exploiting our pure, clean
Islamic sensibilities”? Or if they go further and say “we acted together(with the AKP government) on the illegal Ergenekon
and 'Sledgehammer' hoaxes, we want them to be tried as well”? After all, those
were no different from the July 15th coup attempt; they really constituted the
first step.

THE MENZİLCİ AND THE NAQSHBANDÎ

The claim that the AKP is struggling for democracy and
justice is a big lie. In their 14 years in power they have whittled away at
democracy, justice, human rights, the founding principles of our Republic, and last but not least,
secularism, the sine qua non of Muslim countries especially. It is their
contiuous support of the Cemaat that
has brought about a milieu suitable for a coup.

So the Gülen Cemaat(“community”) is bad, does that make the “Menzilci” (a new sect derived from Naqshbandî)and “Naqshbandî” any
better? One is just as bad as the other. There is only one sect for the modern
man and that is the “sect of Science”.
There are no individuals in communities and
sects, only people who have surrendered their minds, lost their freedom, herded
into easily manipulated masses. In our day all sects and communities, including
politics, incorporate at least one of the trio of power, money and sex.

DOES
JULY 15TH RESEMBLE PREVIOUS COUPS?

You are closing down military high schools but meanwhile
you are trying to open the way for passage from clerical high schools into
military education. Excuse me for saying so but this cannot be attributed to
good intentions. No version of “Political
Islam” should be allowed into the Turkish
Armed Forces.

The coup attempt of July 15th is a retrograde uprising of
“Political Islam” and is unlike any of the previous coups. The fact that they
were wearing uniforms does not change this. The real target of this attempted
coup was not the AKP rule but the
founding ideology of the Republic of
Turkey. The previous coups targeted the government in power uniquely. If
this last coup had been successful, the greatest number of ministers would have
come from the ranks of the AKP, even
the Prime Minister.

With my respects.

This article was published on August 5th 2016, on an
independent internet newssite known as OdaTV.

OdaTV was once the object of Gülen's wrath. It had been raided by the police on February 4th 2011, on orders of state prosecutor Zekeriya Öz, a known Gülen "community" adherent. After Gülen and Erdoğan parted ways, and
Erdoğan launched a crackdown on the Gülen's “parallel state”, the once
all-powerful state prosecutor quietly slipped out of the country to avoid arrest, on August 10th 2015.